In 1917 Woodrow Wilson's Congress
enacted the Trading With the Enemy Act to regulate�not forbid�trade
with belligerent nations. The language of this piece of legislation
defined precisely who was, and who was not, an enemy of the United States.
Specifically excluded from that classification were the citizens of
the United States. That was an oversight that would be corrected three
days after Franklin D. Roosevelt assumed the mantle of the presidency
on March 6, 1933.

During the first 100 days of Roosevelt's
administration, Congress passed a litany of legislative programs ostensibly
designed to stimulate the economy and send America back to work. Most
of this legislation was expediently enacted with about as much congressional
forethought as the Emergency Banking Relief Act. A great deal of
it, like the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the National Industrial Recovery
Act and the Congressional Gold Repeal Joint Resolution, violated
the Constitution of the United States, and portions of those acts would
be declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1935.

The first of three laws designed
to wrest control of the United States away from the States and the people
was engineered on May 9, 1933. This law, enacted without a single Congressman
or Senator reading it�and after only 40 minutes of debate in both houses
of Congress, by both parties�was the Emergency Banking Relief Act.

There were at least two reasons Roosevelt
didn't want Congress looking too closely at the language of the Emergency
Banking Relief Act. First, it restructured the banking system of
the United States and placed even more monetary control in the hands
of the central bankers. Second, it gave Roosevelt war powers control
over the United States of America in peacetime. But most important,
it changed the language of the Trading with the Enemy Act, effectively
classifying the citizens of the United States as the enemies of their
own central government. And, it did one other thing. It granted
Roosevelt (or whomever would follow him into the White House) the right
to redefine the ownership of private property in the United States.

Such redefinition was necessary since
the war powers authority Roosevelt was being accorded to deal with the
national emergency granted him the right to seize the property of those
who failed to comply with the laws which were being enacted. The right
to seize the property of American citizens without due process would
be one of the paramount weapons the government would continue to use
long after the emergency expired. It would be a much-used weapon by
the Internal Revenue Service, which has not hesitated to seize any asset
or property of any American citizen without due process since 1934.
In the last few years, that right has also been assumed by State and
federal police agencies who now seize the assets of drug dealers and
those charged with violations of the RICO act�at the time of arrest,
not conviction. Gone forever is the presumption of innocence until guilt
is proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Municipalities do the same when they
seize the vehicles driven by johns arrested for seeking the illicit
pleasures of prostitutes in hundreds of sting operations launched each
year by countless brigades of city and county police agencies throughout
the country. All such laws, regardless of their deterrent qualities,
and regardless if they are upheld by the courts, violate the Constitution
of the United States because they deny the accused the right to due
process before seizure takes place�an inalienable right they possess
under the Constitution of the United States.

It is a troubling sign of our times
that courts of law in America, regardless of the compelling interest
of society to eradicate the proliferation of illegal drugs that are
taking such a devastating toll on human life and dignity while breeding
all other forms of crime from petty larceny to murder, would wantonly
violate the Constitution of the United States under the guise of providing
a safer and more secure America.

The redefinition of private property
rights is found in Senate Document 43 that examined, and attempted
to justify, the ramifications of the powers delegated to the President
under the War Powers Act�albeit after-the-fact. On page 9 of that document,
the Senate brazenly declared: "The ultimate ownership of all property
is in the State; individual so-called 'ownership' is only by virtue
of the Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user..." That particular
facet of Document 43, further clarified by Senate Report 93-549,
has become codified by precedent.

As the Senate began to examine exactly
what powers they had granted the President by amending the Trading
With the Enemy Act on March 9, 1933, they concluded that: "Under
these powers the president may: seize property; organize and control
the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad;
institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication;
regulate the operation of private industry; restrict travel, and in
a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."
(Senate Report 93-549.)

It is important to note that every
dictatorship in the modern world has abrogated the rights of private
ownership, seized property at will, organized and controlled all production
within its society, seized and controlled the transportation infrastructure
of the nation, nationalized communications to censor the free expression
of opinion�and restricted the movement of its citizens. This is usually
done with an internal passport which the citizens of every authoritarian
country are required to carry with them at all times. Whenever these
steps are taken by any government, democracy dies a bittersweet death
and totalitarianism is born in the ashes of lost freedom.

The Roosevelt brain trust, in paving
the way for Roosevelt to implement his New Deal programs, privately
acknowledged that most of the economic and social programs they were
constructing even before Roosevelt assumed the White House would be
legally problematic when viewed in the context of the constitutionality
of a United States president's authority in peacetime. In times of war,
the Constitution allows for the broadening of presidential powers by
the Chief Executive to deal with extraneous, albeit temporary, emergencies
that seriously threaten the security and welfare of the nation.

However, in 1933 America was not
at war. It was a dilemma the brain trust would quickly solve by modifying
the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917 to include any national
emergency. In doing so, it was also necessary to redefine the enemy
since the extraneous authority granted the President under the terms
of Public Law 91 was directed only at the enemies, and allies of the
enemies, of the United States. A peacetime application of the Trading
With the Enemy Act without some form of universal modification that
would allow Roosevelt to apply the tenets of that law against the citizens
of the United States would be meaningless.

Public Law 1, stemming from
H.R. 1491, will long be remembered both as the bill nobody read
and the legislation that gave the President of the United States dictatorial
power over America. As Americans, many of us criticize those citizens
who blindly vote for candidates based solely on their political affiliation
without possessing any knowledge of the issues at stake in the election
in which they are casting their ballots. Yet, in the Congress of the
United States, on March 9, 1933, those we elected to represent us before
the federal government of the United States did precisely that very
thing themselves. Is it any wonder the electorate of Amer-ica has a
herd mentality?

What happened that day in 1933 is
more terrifying than the stock market crash and the ensuing Depression
combined. Clearly those we elected, and continue to elect, no longer
represent the constituents who placed them in office�and have not for
several years. Most career politicians have been institutionalized and
clearly represent only the interests of big government�and the special
interest groups that contribute massive amounts to keep them in office
so they can manipulate the reins of government from behind the scenes
in the name of the general public they are sworn to serve.

The special session of Congress that
met on March 9, 1933 did so because the President of the United States
called them to address a national emergency of such extraordinary proportions
that it required extraordinary legislation to cope with the crisis.
If that fact, in and of itself, was not a red flag (pardon the pun),
the failure to read the legislation being considered for rushed passage
(another red flag), or the preamble of the legislation itself should
have been.

"Be it enacted by the Senate and
the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress
assembled, That the Congress hereby declares that a serious emergency
exists and that it is imperatively necessary speedily to put into effect
remedies of uniform national application.

TITLE I. Section 1. The actions,
regulations, rules, licenses, orders and proclamations heretofore or
hereafter taken, promulgated, made, or issued by the President of the
United States or the Secretary of the Treasury since March 4, 1933,
pursuant to the authority conferred by subsection (b) of section 5 of
the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended, are hereby approved and confirmed."

A very large red flag was being waved.

The Emergency Bill begins with an
admission that the new President and his Treasury Secretary had already
broken the law; and were now seeking not only retroactive exoneration
for those deeds, but absolution from future infractions of the Constitution
as well. Clearly, Roosevelt and Attorney General Homer Cummings did
not want Congress scrutinizing the bill too closely because some of
the very subtle textual changes they made in their revisions of the
Act of October 6, 1917 might not stand up under the light of
day.

Many Congressmen believed the only
revisions were those found in Section 5(b) (italicized). "During time
of war or during any other period of national emergency declared
by the President, the President may, through any agency he may designate,
or otherwise, investigate, regulate, or prohibit, under such rules and
regulations as he may prescribe, by means of license or otherwise, any
transactions in foreign exchange, transfers of credits between or
payments by banking institutions as defined by the President, and export,
hoarding, melting, or earmarking of gold or silver coin or bullion
or currency, by any person within the United States or any place
subject to the jurisdiction thereof..."

In fact, the Act of October 6,
1917 expressly forbade the President from interfering in banking
transactions executed wholly within the United States. Furthermore,
Public Law 91, Chapter 106, declares itself to be "An Act to define,
regulate, and punish trading with the enemy, and for other purposes"
�none of which dealt with citizens of the United States, clearly defined
by Section 2(c): "(c) Such other individuals, or body or class of
individuals, as may be natives, citizens, or subjects of any nation
with which the United States is at war, other than citizens of the United
States..." Again, we see the same exclusion. As defined under the Act
of October 6, 1917, American citizens were exempted from the classification
of an "enemy." However, in the Roosevelt version, the only people
under scrutiny for punitive action are American citizens�or those who
haplessly fall within the jurisdiction of the United States government.
Roosevelt sought, and was granted by Congress, power to engage in an
economic war against the people of the United States.

It may well be that the only use
Roosevelt intended to make of the expanded war powers authority was
to protect his Administration from any potential problems that could
have arisen from assuming prerogatives he did not legally possess when
he closed the banks over which he had no Constitutional authority. More
likely than not, either he or his brain trust�or both�realized that
his far-reaching socialist agenda to nationalize the industrial base
of America would usurp not only the separation of powers between the
executive, judicial and legislative branches of the federal government,
but would create insurmountable sovereignty issues between the federal
government and the States as well. Realizing that, possessing supra-wartime
powers would weigh heavily in disputes with either the States or with
Congress.

On September 14, 1976 Congress passed
H.R. 3884, the National Emergencies Act (50 USC 1601), Public Law
94-412, to terminate the broad powers previously granted to the
President. Exempted from the law were any and all actions taken before
the bill became law; or, any fines, assessments or penalties due the
government from those actions.

However, what Congress erased with
one hand, it rewrote with the other. The only thing permanently taken
from the President was autonomy. Section 201.(a) granted virtually the
same powers to the Congress, which must now authorize the President
to declare states of national emergencies that he could formerly do
without their consent.

This slight of hand was important
to Congress because it allows Congress, through a concurrent resolution,
to terminate any state of emergency declared by the President. Retained,
almost in its entirety, was the infamous Section 5(b) which classified
the citizens of the United States as enemies of their government. The
Trading With the Enemy Act has now been duly codified, and is now a
permanent part of the U.S. Federal Code. And the American people have
permanently been classified as enemies of their federal government.

Jon Christian Ryter is the pseudonym of a
former newspaper reporter with the Parkersburg, WV Sentinel. He authored
a syndicated newspaper column, Answers From The Bible, from the mid-1970s
until 1985. Answers From The Bible was read weekly in many suburban
markets in the United States.

Today, Jon is an advertising
executive with the Washington Times. His website, www.jonchristianryter.com
has helped him establish a network of mid-to senior-level Washington
insiders who now provide him with a steady stream of material for
use both in his books and in the investigative reports that are found
on his website. E-Mail: BAFFauthor@aol.com

The Emergency Bill begins with an
admission that the new President and his Treasury Secretary had already
broken the law; and were now seeking not only retroactive exoneration
for those deeds, but absolution from future infractions of the Constitution
as well.